2024 Programming EOY
This year was a bit light on programming. I was focused a lot on gaming, cooking, and Tabletop Gaming. (No surprise if you’ve been reading my December blog posts) I constantly found myself desiring to code and I definitely had a few ideas - like a utility to extract EXIF data out of my images for use in Hugo. But when I would sit down at my computer I often found myself preferring to play Cities: Skylines II or Against the Storm. (More on that when I post my EOY video game post) As per usual, let’s go month-by-month (after the first quarter that is)
Talk Python Bits
Michael Kennedy from the podcasts Python Bytes and Talk Python has recently written a couple blog posts that I wanted to highlight here. First up is his post about rewriting the Talk Python site in Quart (aka async Flask). Three and a half years ago I wrote about realizing that it’s not about Django vs Flask vs FastAPI, but actually about finding the right framework for your workload. I didn’t completely state my current thought process in that blog post, but I was pretty close to the advice I currently give. If you want a Python-based site that needs CMS features and you don’t want to have to reinvent the world, Django is your framework. If you are making websites where you want to be in control of every puzzle piece, then you want flask. You only bring in what you need. And if you’re writing REST API based site (controversy about whether REST truly is REST aside), you want FastAPI. Well, I respect Michael Kennedy’s opinion on this matter for a few reasons:
Programming Update: October 2022
As October came around, it was time to get ready for Hacktoberfest. I’ve been participating for the past few years and I love the fact that DigitalOcean supports this project which gets more people to contribute to free and open source software.
In the past, I’ve often contributed to my Extra Life Donation Tracker. Since the program is pretty mature at this point, most of the issues I have would have taken me too long, especially with how busy I’ve been with non-programming projects lately. So I dedicated my efforts to helping with some quality of life issues for the Prophecy Practicum (Django Version) that I’ve coded up for my friend.
Programming Update: January/February 2022
I started off the year not expecting to do much programming. Compared to some months in 2021, I barely programmed, but I did end up programming much more than I expected. Let’s take a look at what I worked on in the first sixth of the year.
Python Programs
End of Year Video Games Helper
Coming off of last year in which I finally used Python to pull my last.fm data and create graphs, I decided to do the same for my End of Year Video Games blog post. I haven’t posted the code to Github, but here it is:
Django vs Flask vs FastAPI
Over the 16 years that this blog spans I must have, at some point, mentioned that I believe sometimes we get knowledge when we’re not ready to receive it.This isn’t some spiritual or new age thing (although you’ll hear Chopra and/or Tony Robbins talk about the phenomenon). It’s simply my lived experience. Sometimes you come across some knowledge, but there’s some underpinning knowledge missing or maybe some life experience you don’t yet have to put your new knowledge into context. So sometimes this leads to a difficulty in learning the concept and other times you just don’t get the point of it and file it away or throw it away - no need to waste neurons on this!
Programming Projects: March 2021
I started off the month thinking it was going to be Python heavy and ended up doing a lot more micro-controller programming. To be fair, I was mostly programming in CircuitPython, but it definitely came out of nowhere.
Python
Civilization VI Webhook in FastAPI
Last month I created a webhook program in Flask to generate notifications when it was someone’s turn in our multiplayer Civilization games. When I posted about it on reddit, someone suggested that I would be better off using FastAPI instead of Flask. I’d been hearing about FastAPI for months on Talk Python to Me and Python Bytes, but I always got the impression that it would only be useful if I was writing my website to be async.